Engineering Knowledge: The Construction of Knowledge in Artificial Intelligence

This paper presents an anthropological study of knowledge production in the expert systems community within AI. Expert systems are built by knowledge engineers, specialists in the task known as `knowledge acquisition'. This is a complex process of interpretation and translation; not surprisingly (to an anthropologist, at least), it presents a troublesome `bottleneck'. However, knowledge engineers have a different perspective on why this is so. Typically positivist in approach, they see knowledge acquisition as conceptually straightforward. In their view, it is difficult, not because of the nature of knowledge or the complexity of the process, but rather because it requires extended face-to-face interaction between knowledge engineer and expert. Believing that automation will `get around' the inexact and uncontrollable nature of this interaction, they seek to automate it. Drawing on ethnographic material, the paper explores the knowledge engineers' epistemological stance, noting its characteristic deletions, and suggesting that they are reflected in the resultant technology.